Daniel Boulud just may be the hardest working man in the restaurant business. After training with several of France’s top chefs, Lyon, France native Boulud made his name in the United States when he served as executive chef at Le Cirque from 1986 to 1992. In 1993 he opened his first restaurant, the four-star Restaurant Daniel. Café Boulud followed in 1998. With these two top New York City restaurants, as well as a specialty catering business and two books under his belt, he opened db Bistro Moderne in June. Boulud also sits on the Advisory Council to the Institute of Culinary Education. He took time out of his impressively busy schedule to speak to The Cooking School News.

What are some of your earliest food memories?
My best food memory has to be Sundays when all the family gathered together around the table. We kept the best things for Sunday—a whole goose, all the vegetables from the garden, fruits. I didn’t know what caviar and smoked salmon were then! What we ate was very basic, but beautiful.

What do you look for when tasting food? What facets of a dish are most important to you?
What I’m most impressed with is the most simple yet the most winning combination. I look for the right preparation and technique, the right composition of acid and sweet or fat content and the seasoning, and, of course, texture. I don’t always know exactly what I’m looking for, but I know when it’s wrong.

Is there something you consider your breakthrough signature dish, something that the first time you made it and tasted it, you knew it would be a success and would always be associated with you?
Yes, definitely. About 12 years ago I made Sea Scallops Black Tie—scallops with black truffles that was black and white—for my first New Year’s Eve at Le Cirque. That was an instant classic that got big raves. It’s interesting, in the life of a chef you don’t make too many classic dishes. You really become known for just a few.

Is there a dish that is your holy grail, a taste or texture you’ve always wanted to recreate and never been able to?
More than not being able to create a dish myself, the holy grail can arise in the course of creating a new dish and arranging to have it made on a daily basis. A very little element can make or break a dish. Once we were doing a lobster dish and my vision was to create a wonderful chanterelle crust and a bean fricassee underneath and a sweet parsley and garlic emulsion. The dish worked very well when I first made it, but if just one little element was off, the crust would burn or turn greasy or the lobster would cook too fast. When creating a new menu, you find some dishes work well in testing, but not in production. Trying to make it work can be a painful process. And sometimes we just have to cancel a dish.

It is widely known that you have been a mentor to young people, and your restaurants have been a stepping stone in many careers. Are there people who have worked for you in the past, or do so now, of whom you’re particularly proud?
There are chefs all over the country: Lee Hanson and Riad Nasr at Balthazar in New York, Charles Dale in Aspen, and Michael Leviton in Boston at a small restaurant called Lumiere. The chef at Avenue, Scott Campbell, is another one. I stay in touch with them, and I consider it my biggest responsibility not to disappoint so they can keep using my name as a reference.

What about yourself? Is there one professional chef in particular who influenced you when you were starting out? Anyone you’d consider your mentor?
I worked for the four greatest people, although all were very different in style and personality: Georges Blanc, Michel Guerard, Roger Vergé and Gerard Nandron, and of course many other chefs of their generation. Working in a three-star restaurant in France you cross paths with many other cooks. Everyone exchanges what they’ve done in the past, which was great because I would learn what someone had learned somewhere else. Sharing recipes and styles and cooking philosophy is interesting and matures you. Now of course so many chefs have cookbooks that you barely have to ask.

Do you have any advice for our career students, young men and women just starting out on their careers?
One thing school doesn’t provide is the pressure of a business. In a restaurant, you learn that economy is very important. When you buy carrots, you shouldn’t julienne them and end up putting half into the garbage. Everything you buy should be processed or transformed into food. New graduates should go to Italy and see an Italian mamma making a soup—everything goes into that soup, and it’s the best. That’s how I learned at home. A lot of chefs go broke because, while they are good chefs, they don’t understand the economics of the business and don’t know how to make money. When you do the marketing, it’s very important that you be able to figure that a 15-pound salmon makes 22 portions. You have to make sure there’s no waste—the smart person will figure out not only how to make 22 portions, but also what to do with the salmon bones.

How many people does it take to run Restaurant Daniel? Roughly how many people are in each position?
All together there are about 150 people. We have 55 chefs, including the bakery department. We have about 60 people working in the front of the house, including reservations. And then we have about 20 or so maintenance people handling cleaning, as well as the dishwashers and stewarding department. Then in the office there are about 15 people.

How do the 55 chefs break down?
It’s a big pyramid. There is one chef de cuisine and six sous chefs. After that there are mostly cooks and externs. The cooks have a range of experience, from one to seven years. They’re the bulk of it. We usually have four or five externs at a time. In pastry there are two co-chefs, then two sous chefs, one chef-baker and ten cooks.

Restaurant Daniel’s kitchen is dominated by a very large Bonnet range “island.” Can you tell me about it?
It’s massive. It projects a lot of heat, so I made it 1 1/2 inches higher than the way it comes. It’s on a cement platform that is 5.5 inches off the floor instead of 4. Then there is the stove. The stove arrived in one huge piece, and they put up the hood first. When they rolled the stove into the kitchen, it looked like it wasn’t going to fit! But there was 1/4 inch of space, so they managed. It weighs about three tons and all together the restaurant has about a quarter of a million dollars in stoves. As a long-term investment, it’s worth it. It’s a fantastic stove.

What is so special about it?
I’d compare it to having windows and doors in a home that are bronze rather than aluminum. An aluminum window frame fulfills its purpose. But a bronze window frame can last two centuries and is truly beautiful. The plate covering the stove is made of titanium stainless steel—the same kind of steel they use to make rockets—so it can withstand 5,000 degrees of heat without retracting. It’s definitely the ultimate cooking machine. It’s like a Ferrari—it gives you a different driving experience.

With or without naming names, do you have any funny or intriguing stories about celebrities who have eaten at Restaurant Daniel?
We had a French star staying at the hotel when he was making a movie. He would come back from shooting at five in the afternoon and come straight to the kitchen, where he’d fill up a big plate with the staff meal and take a bottle of wine under his arm. It was very charming, as if he were shooting in a small village with only one restaurant. We’ve served a lot of movie stars. Dustin Hoffman came by one afternoon and peeked in because he didn’t know the place. We invited him to have a drink, and spent an hour and a half talking to him, and that night he brought his family. We feel flattered when people trust us. We’re not going to call the paparazzi because we have so-and-so. Of course, movie stars are often very easy to please—they appreciate good service and they never mind having their pictures taken. Politicians, chefs and movie stars are all the same that way!

For the benefit of Americans who may be visiting Paris soon, what three restaurants would you recommend visiting there to get a range of gastronomic experience?
Guy Savoir for the ultimate three-star experience in a two-star shell. Hélène Darroze is a woman chef who has a good one-star restaurant by the same name. She’s very well-trained, with a blend of traditional and contemporary. And finally, Le Bistrot d’a Côté, a Michel Rostang restaurant. It’s very casual, bistro-ish French.

What do you cook for yourself at home?
Simple and easy, because we live above Restaurant Daniel, so if we want a fancy meal, I cook it downstairs. In the winter my favorite is chicken with fennel and some sea salt and a nice olive oil. In the summer I make huge salads with ten different vegetables.

What’s in your refrigerator at home right now?
I always have yogurt, because I eat it every night before I go to bed. Some beer. I always have a hard cheese like gruyère, so when I go home at night and I’ve forgotten to eat or want a snack I have a piece of toast and cheese. The cheese can last a month in the refrigerator. We always stock champagne and a bottle of white wine, because you never know. And we have organic eggs, because my daughter loves to cook eggs on Sunday.

In addition to running three restaurants, you’ve authored two cookbooks and appear on numerous television and radio programs. How do you organize your time? Is there a “typical” day for you?
There’s only one thing all my days share—they are all full. I’ve been cooking now for thirty years. These days I spend 60% of my time in the kitchen, versus 90% previously. The other 40% of my time is spent on management and doing things that are part of maintaining the enterprise for the security of my staff, because I have responsibilities beyond just cooking. It probably breaks down to eight or nine hours in the kitchen and five or six hours at meetings or in the office.

So you work thirteen- to fifteen-hour days regularly?
It can be very frustrating, but what else do I know in life? I also have a trainer in the morning who is grueling. She has promised to make my abs as hard as a table!

How does your new restaurant, db, differ from your other two New York City restaurants?
I’ve always had a passion for ingredients, so this new restaurant reflects market-driven ingredients, and it’s a bistro. I take one ingredient and use it several ways, like I might make a lobster soup, a lobster salad and a lobster main dish. The menu constantly evolves with the market. The easy explanation is that Café Boulud is Restaurant Daniel at a 25% discount, and db is Restaurant Daniel at a 50% discount. We have the same philosophy about food and service with a more casual approach, but with great consistency and rigor. I’m calling it “bistro moderne.”

What else is in the works for you right now?
Right now I don’t want any more projects, although I have a few ideas. The menu at db, divided by ingredients, reflects the idea I have of doing a series of very small single-subject cookbooks. I’d also like to start working on a new cookbook that reflects the philosophy of Restaurant Daniel. And I’d love to open one other place, which would be Restaurant Daniel at a 75% discount, like a boutique takeout or a little marché. But first I want to concentrate on db. If Café Boulud is a café, it’s one of the best in the world, and we want this to be the best bistro in the world.